Launched in August 2019, the plant has a processing capacity of up to 750,000 tonnes a year and will be able to treat larger and larger quantities of used vegetable and frying oil, animal fats, algae and waste/advanced by-products to produce high-quality biofuels. A total of more than 360 million euros has so far been spent on the conversion of the refinery and the ancillaries units. A further investment is now underway in a biomass pre-treatment unit (BTU), which will be completed by the end of 2020. This will allow the plant to be fed entirely with second-generation raw materials, consisting of waste, crude vegetable oils and advanced materials. The process of converting the traditional refinery into a bio-refinery began in April 2016 and took more than 3 million hours of work by third parties to finish. Significantly, there were also no accidents along the way.
Our bio-refinery in Gela is designed for treating advanced and unconventional loads up to 100% of processing capacity. It is one of the few bio-refineries in the world with such high operating flexibility. Gela is defined by its ability to process "unconventional" second-generation raw material from food production waste, regenerated used cooking oil (RUCO), animal fats (tallow) and by-products from processing vegetable oil. This makes it an innovative plant with high environmental sustainability that can process loads that would otherwise be disposed of as waste – to the cost of the community and the environment – using them instead for biofuel, creating a real-world example of the circular economy.
Building the bio-refinery guarantees improvement in all environmental fields, emitting more than 70% fewer emissions (of SO2, NOx, CO and dust) than traditional production cycles. We will be doing a variety of things to improve the visual aspect of the site. The skyline of the industrial area will gradually improve with the planned decommissioning of the old oil refining facilities, including the demolition of the SNOX stack. In the first phase, lasting three years, all twenty hectares of disused areas on the site will be dismantled and repurposed. We will also remove debris and structures on the seabed, stretching 500 m along each side of the pier.
To create the Ecofining™ plant, we modified the two existing desulphuration units and built a steam reforming unit to produce hydrogen. Hydrogen is a basic ingredient in hydrogenated vegetable oil (HVO), the biodiesel that, when added to fossil diesel at 15%, makes the premium fuel Enidiesel.
In addition to the new biorefinery, the Gela site is also home to the Waste-to-Fuel pilot plant. Transforming organic waste into water and bio-oil since December 2018, the plant and can also extract biomethane. Eni Rewind, the environmental company of the Eni group, invested over 3 million euros in the construction and commissioning of the pilot plant. Eni Rewind will lead the industrial development and management of waste-to-fuel plants across Italy in a joint venture with Cassa Depositi e Prestiti (CDP), as per an MoU signed by Eni and CDP on 12 March 2019.
Our results
Compared to traditional refining, the biorefinery will produce:
750,000
tonnes/year
installed capacity by 2019
>70%
reduction
in atmospheric emissions (SO₂, NOₓ, CO and particulate)
>60%
reduction
in CO₂ emissions
>25%
reduction
in water abstraction
65%
reduction
in waste water
Press releases
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